Author Archives: Dmitry Yakimenko

Soviet Brands: The Scent Of Communism. Part 1 of 2

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The great short­age of almost every­thing required for nor­mal well being was one of the most dis­tin­guished fea­tures of the Soviet econ­omy. Surely, there was food, clothes and some cos­metic goods in the Soviet shops in 1950s-1970s but the vari­ety was incred­i­bly poor.

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How­ever, the phi­los­o­phy was that the Soviet peo­ple were used to com­par­ing their life stan­dards with the ones of the Sec­ond World War – so any small-time lux­ury was very warmly wel­comed. Being a nation of plain tastes, the Soviet peo­ple were happy to be buy­ing things made in the USSR – they under­stood that even not so long before, it was impossible.

Many peo­ple still asso­ciate the fra­grance “Red Moscow” with their child­hood. All women, espe­cially those who wanted to be ele­gant, were in love with this per­fume.  “Red Moscow”, cre­ated exclu­sively for the Russ­ian Empress Maria Feodor­ovna, in 1913, had quickly become a tremen­dous suc­cess both in Rus­sia and abroad. Henri Bro­card, the owner of the largest Russ­ian fac­tory of pomades, per­fumes and soaps before the Rev­o­lu­tion; had cre­ated the per­fume “The Empress’s Favourite Bou­quet”. When in 1917 his fac­tory was nation­alised and renamed into the “Zamoskvoret­skiy Soap Fac­tory No 5”, the per­fume was also renamed as “Red Moscow”.

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The Very First Miss USSR

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The very though of women com­pet­ing for the title of the most beau­ti­ful was a fairly adver­sar­ial con­cept for the Soviet ide­ol­ogy. A woman, first and fore­most, was a worker, an achiever, a mother and a wife, and nobody would con­sider judg­ing one on the phys­i­cal attrac­tive­ness — let alone allow women spend the valu­able time and money on point­less fash­ion, cos­met­ics and hair styling.

fashion4 The Very First Miss USSR

A uni­form parade was the clos­est thing to a beauty pageant in the USSR. It was an hon­our to par­tic­i­pate in one.

That’s why, when across the globe beauty con­tests became pop­u­lar and wide­spread after the Sec­ond World War, the USSR had its ban on such events. Until 1989, when the very first beauty con­test took place in Moscow — try­ing to find the pret­ti­est of them all.

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How Khrushchev Had Killed the “Vampire”

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Build­ing binge com­menced in the Soviet Rus­sia in 1955 when the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee of the Com­mu­nist Party  issued a decree “About elim­i­na­tion of unnec­es­sary extrav­a­gance in archi­tec­ture”.  The pre-war, Stalin-approved  archi­tec­ture was notable for mon­u­men­tal columns, high-stud ceil­ings and indis­pens­able stucco mould­ings.  This  was a Soviet ver­sion of Empire style (or “Vam­pire”, coined by con­tem­po­raries) and it was about to fade away.

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Project of the Palace of sovi­ets (1772×1374). Sadly, was not built due to the lack of financing.

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Soviet Automobile Industry — Part 2 of 2

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Zaporozhets, ZAZ 968A

In 1960 the con­struc­tion of a huge car plant in Ukraine was fin­ished and the new car “Zaporozhec” ZAZ-965 (later nick­named “Hump­backed”) was offered for sale. In terms of design, it was a unique car despite the numer­ous talks that it was just a replica of Volk­swa­gen “Bee­tle” and Fiat “Topolino”. This car had a hard roof (unlike Fiat) and an air-cooled engine (unlike “Bee­tle”). This small inex­pen­sive car rapidly gained high pop­u­lar­ity with peo­ple not only in the USSR but also abroad.

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Funtime with Soviet Playthings

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Red Army models

Just like chil­dren any­where in the world, the Soviet kids needed toys to play with. Cer­tainly the range of toys designed and pro­duced was an envi­able one, by some stan­dards. How­ever, the aes­thetic appear­ance of toys was not a pri­or­ity for Soviet design­ers — toys had to be func­tional and edu­ca­tional. Any­thing beyond that, like pleas­ant looks, was not con­sid­ered to be impor­tant and, more­over, it was seen as an unnec­es­sary indul­gence. The lack of com­pe­ti­tion from the imports due to the  planned econ­omy and severe short­ages  of qual­ity prod­ucts in the shops actu­ally resulted in the very poor deliv­ery and lim­ited vari­ety of toys. The Soviet par­ents were able to get only these kinds of toys as imported toys were lit­er­ally impos­si­ble to buy.

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Soviet Automobile Industry — Part 1 of 2

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Let us start with some sad news. Objec­tively, the auto­mo­bile indus­try in mod­ern Rus­sia is way behind the rest of the world, with a 10 to 15 year progress gap.  Lag­ging behind in tech­nol­ogy, low and incon­sis­tent qual­ity of parts and assem­bling are the actual prob­lems of all car plants in Rus­sia. But was it all the same back in the Soviet times? Today we are going to try and answer this question.

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Lada 1300/1.2 or VAZ 2101

Back in remote 1945, the year of the Vic­tory in Sec­ond World War, just one day before the Tri­umph Parade in Moscow the team of Soviet engi­neers intro­duced new model M-20 “Pobeda” (eng.: Vic­tory) to Stalin. Stalin was dis­sat­is­fied. “That is def­i­nitely not our best victory”, — he said with a frown. Nev­er­the­less in the fall of 1945 the car mass pro­duc­tion commenced.

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